Downvote me to hell but I can't stand the new logo. It's the little things, the designer is on the right track, simplification is the right direction but...<p>The new 2013 logo is unbalanced & dull.<p>1) First it's extremely unbalanced, all the eye popping color, depth, & detail is in the tail with nearly no highlights on the left side of the logo.<p>2) The fur on the end of the tail is 3D, slightly wrapping itself around the globe. Why? Why simplify the whole logo and leave the tail with the same awful complexities as the previous 09-13 logo? The tails in the 04-05 and 05-09 are near perfection and more simple. The newer tails add unnecessary detail yet they were kept.<p>3) It's inconsistently flat. Usually flat coincides with simple, but the logo's complex outlines have actually been exaggerated while the coloring has been flattened and simplified. The fox's head and torso on the other hand were nicely simplified (aside from the little hairs added all over).<p>4) It's dull. What was once planet earth is now a dull blue ball with coffee stains.<p>5) The gradient of orange to yellow is too hard. The entire fox is orange then sharply turns to yellow after the tail starts. The gradient change in the 04-05 version is perfect. The new logo's gradient is harsh and too distracting.<p>6) Micro-details were added. Why? I thought this was about simplifying? Look at the fox's fur on it's back. There's little tiny hairs that have been added that weren't there in the 04-05 and 05-09 version. There's no reason for those to be there. When the logo is shrunk and viewed at it's normal size they won't even be visible, why not just remove them altogether. In fact the ears have added hairs as well.<p>It's easily salvageable and the designer was on the right track:<p>Just bright up planet earth, contrast the continents from the ocean more, remove the 3D-ness of the fox's tail, further simplify or remove the tail's inner fur spikes, and soften the gradient of orange to yellow that runs across the fox's body and get rid of those annoying hairs that one can only see when zoomed in 400%.
I started reading this article with a burning prejudice against overly nitpicky designers, but I have to say, each change here makes perfect sense and contributes to a more cohesive whole. Never thought Firefox of all places would be a good place to read about design. Great work!<p>In regards to the flatness and lack of detail that some people are complaining about: when I look at the Firefox icon in my taskbar, I don't parse it as a fox and a globe but rather as an abstract red/blue circle. The simplified design will make this easier to read -- much more in line with, for example, the Chrome logo.
I don't care about the new logo, or the old one... I just clicked the comments link to confirm what's at this point become pretty well documented on HN: <i>all articles introducing new graphic designs of any kind will be hated</i>.<p>Not that it's not justified, but I'd challenge anyone to pull up an example to the contrary. I'm sure someone can find one, and it'll probably somehow involve Stripe :)
Interesting that they aim to have a single resolution-independent logo ("This tied into another goal of having the image hold up with greater clarity at smaller sizes" <i>and</i> "with high resolution displays in mind"), while traditionally, advice was to tweak icons to their display size and resolution. For example, <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ipad/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/applehiguidelines/IconsImages/IconsImages.html" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ipad/#documentation/...</a> says "redraw art as you scale down" and "do not use the standard-resolution 32x32 icon as the 16x16@2 icon". Similarly, <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511280.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa51...</a> says "Simply scaling down from the 256x256 size does not work" and "As an icon gets smaller, transparency and some special details found in larger sizes should be sacrificed in order to simplify and get the point across."<p>This isn't purely by technological choice ("we want a svg logo"), as one can somewhat build a svg where the level of detail varies depending on display size (<a href="http://timkadlec.com/2013/04/media-queries-within-svg/" rel="nofollow">http://timkadlec.com/2013/04/media-queries-within-svg/</a>).<p>So it's either a deliberate "it's better that way" choice, or a "better one really good logo than a couple of less good ones", or they weren't aware of media queries, or they don't think them supported well enough.
And in 2-3 years there'll be another post 'explaining' how the 2013 logo was too dull or the gradients lacked dynamics or something, and there'll be another logo that's basically the same with marginal changes, because people basically can't resist the urge to tweak.<p>I appreciate that people get bored and design sensibilities change. But spare us the long-winded itemization of why this is 'objectively' better, when it's obviously a simple matter of taste.
Somehow I still prefer Jon Hicks original re-brand of the phoenix logo the best. That is the 2004-2005 version displayed in the article. See [1] for an earlier evolution write-up of the brand logo.<p><a href="http://thinsmek.com/a-history-of-the-firefox-icon-and-details-on-the-3-5-logo/" rel="nofollow">http://thinsmek.com/a-history-of-the-firefox-icon-and-detail...</a>
Am I alone in thinking that the 2005–09 logo is clearly the strongest image? I'd like to see the results of a poll. Designers can talk their way into all sorts of things; a bit of objective measurement of opinion would be interesting.
I wish there was some more contrast on the continents, but otherwise I think it looks nice (and they finally fixed the arm!!).<p>However, given that one of the stated reasons for the change is "SVG compatibility", I'm surprised that there's no link to an SVG version. And the official Mozilla branding page doesn't seem to be updated yet:<p><a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/identity/firefox/branding/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/styleguide/identity/firefox/br...</a>
This is mostly about the transition to SVG, not really a "brand evolution". The new logo is fine, not that much better or worse than any of the other variations shown. I don't get the hoopla.<p>I like what Wolff Olins did for Firefox OS and would love to see Mozilla take major new steps in that direction, with more radical changes to the logo (which frankly has always looked like a shrimp at favicon size): <a href="http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/mozilla_to_mobile_oses_fox_you.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/mozilla_...</a>
I have never really liked the Firefox logo much. I guess this is a decent compromise given what they've got, and looking at an example of what a completely flat Firefox logo would look like it just doesn't quite work, think this is a at least a step forward.<p><a href="http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/85101/513/browser_firefox_flat_mozilla_icon" rel="nofollow">http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/85101/513/browser_fire...</a>
My browser didn't want to resize the page smaller than 25%, so I made this to visualize the logos at very small sizes:<p><a href="http://rkuykendall.com/uploads/fx-logos-small.png" rel="nofollow">http://rkuykendall.com/uploads/fx-logos-small.png</a>
I hate this current "make it flat" movement. Ok, it's good so smoothen the logo a bit, the oval light on top wasn't super pretty, but the grade of details (in the fox!) were just about perfect.
It lost a lot of depth on the left hand side. Instead of looking like the back of a fox, it just looks like an amorphous shape with a tail. 2009-2013 was the best on the left hand side.
The word simple must be the word for today. From the payment processor to arguments for and against simple coding..arrrgh. Do you want a simple logo? Do what USA Today did to their logo. Have a third grader spill blue paint.
It wasn't a good logo to begin with. Lets start there. It's trying too hard to be literal and fit into the blue round boundaries of most other browser logos. And I honestly don't know whether the tail is supposed to be stylized fire or not. The asymmetry and distracting hi lights bother me too. In order to evolve and mature a logo it has to be solid to begin with. Otherwise updating it just makes it fall apart.
I am experiencing extreme design rage that they kept the way the blue globe shows through in ragged edges of the tail. It’s pointless, distracting, and violent.<p>“Violent,” you wonder? “Surely you are insane and hyperbolic.” I am neither. Look at those spots and tell me they don’t look like a cheese grater. I wouldn’t touch this icon if it existed in 3D space. Would you?
I gather this is driven by SVG: an efficient use of a minimal number of bezier curves (quite literally, <i>reticulating splines</i>).<p>It would be a nice project to automatically recreate existing image files as efficient SVGs.<p>However, this procedure seems to make things look flat and textureless.
Oddly, until reading this article I was always under the impression the Shepard Fairey created the Firefox logo...something seemed off redesigning the Firefox logo and not mentioning Shepard, so I looked into it and...<p>It turns out Shepard Fairey created the red "Mozilla.org logo and mascot" (see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_%28mascot%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_%28mascot%29</a>).
Never really been a fan of the Firefox logo. Why not go for a revolution? Just use the Red Panda as inspiration for something very cutsey and recognisable. Bin the current logo.<p>I like the idea of the ship's wheel in the navigator logo, and the compass in Safari. As for the other logos they don't do anything for me (oh alright, IceWeasel is quite a funny knock off, and Nightly's is boringly okay.)
Oh I thought it was a lazy designer that left out all the details in the Firefox logo. Never imagined it was actually a new logo. Didn't really notice it a lot though anyway, not sure you can even call this a new logo.
For an article about how it is now SVG-compatible for improved display on retina-class screens, it sure does look crappy on my Chromebook Pixel.<p>Would have been nice if they used retina-quality assets in the announcement...
I remember the hullabaloo when the 'flat' Chrome logo was introduced, but people have gotten used to it as well. Seems to me like the FF logo will undergo a similar transition :)
Jerking it, Firefox edition. Nobody cares about the details as 99% of the users will look at this logo in a 16x16 or 32x32 px version.<p>Is it a fox hugging a globe? Is the fox red/orange? Yes? Is it somewhat detailed? Okay. _Good enough_.
Oh look, it's even more flat!<p>Just put the gun to its head and pull the trigger. Flat's all the rage man, why not kill another great logo with it!